Averett gains traction with victory over Johnson & Wales

Second-year Averett coach Matt Parke found the perfect analogy for his young team prior to the Cougars’ tilt Wednesday against Johnson & Wales that served as the perfect remedy for the team’s early-season struggles.

“We use the analogy of getting stuck in a ditch in a snow storm — you don’t have any traction, you can’t get out and we kind of use that analogy that we had to all push together,” Parke said. “Once you get a little bit of traction, good things can happen. We were in a slide, we were 0-5 and we were in that ditch. We needed this game to help us get some traction and push us out.”

After finishing the 2010-11 season with a 1-12 mark in the 2011 calendar year, the Cougars got much-needed traction on the young season with a 103-81 victory over Johnson & Wales at the Grant Center.

The victory for Averett (1-5) gives the Cougars some life heading into the team’s next contest — a road tilt at High Point, where the Cougars will be asked to slow down Danville native Nick Barbour.

“Really it gives us momentum as a team because we know what we’re capable of,” Averett junior guard Marquis Scott said. Scott finished with 10 points and 12 rebounds. “We know that we can play defense, we can score; we just got to use that as motivation and keep going for it and can’t take no steps back on it.”

It marked the second time Averett reached the century mark under Parke. The Cougars scored 100 points in a 106-100 double-overtime loss at Bridgewater early last season.

The Cougars were able to find a rhythm early in the game with easy transition baskets and hitting the offensive glass for points.

Those traits should serve Averett well in its USA South Conference schedule, which begins in early January after a rigorous December that includes the trip to High Point (Dec. 10) and a road game at Randolph-Macon (Dec. 19).

“It definitely does something for our confidence,” Averett junior guard Justin Pierce said. Pierce finished with a career-high 25 points, while adding six assists and four rebounds. “We’ve been working really hard in practice and trying to stay after it, even after a season like last year. We got off to a bad start, but this will definitely give us confidence going into the next one.

Averett’s 64 rebounds Wednesday night were one short of tying the school record of 65 set against Warren Wilson in 1994. That mark keeps the team in line with Parke’s ability to teach his team the fundamentals of rebounding.

Despite last season’s woeful record, the Cougars still finished 25th in the nation in rebounding.

The Cougars’ 30 offensive rebounds were more than Johnson & Wales had the entire game (28).

“I’ve coached four teams that have been top 10 in Division 3 in rebounding and last year we were 25th in the country. Even being 3-23, we were still a good rebounding team,” Parke said. “One thing that we work on every single day is rebounding. … Those kids have bought in.”

Averett sophomore forward Paul Porter finished with a game-high 15 rebounds. Junior guard Grant Chandler added 17 points on 5 of 9 shooting from 3-point range.

“Psychologically, it helps us keep going because if you get off to a bad start like that, your head starts to get down, you start to mope around and it definitely gets us to where we need to be at as the season goes on,” Pierce said.